The Culver City boys’ basketball team will have to play their best game of the year to beat second place Beverly Hills tonight at Beverly Hills if they expect to punch their ticket into the playoffs. Their last regular season Ocean league game will tip off at 7:30 p.m. tonight.
The Centaurs are 12-13 overall and 3-6 in the Ocean league. Beverly Hills is 17-8 and 7-2 in league play and their only two loses are to first place Santa Monica. Culver City loss to Santa Monica last Friday night but they bounced back and beat Hawthorne 53-51 last Tuesday.
Although the Centaurs loss to Santa Monica 75-59 last week they battled the Vikings toe to toe for three quarters before the No. 1 team in CIF pulled away. The Vikings are 23-2. “You have to give Culver City credit,” said Santa Monica coach James Hecht. “They were aggressive from the start of the game. We were on our heels early in the game. Culver City did not make it easy on us.”
Culver City head coach Adam Eskridge was happy with his teams’ effort against Santa Monica. “It was definitely one of our better games. I am proud of the way we played. Our defense was great tonight. If we continue to play the way we played tonight I will take my chances against any team.”
Senior guard Isaiah Benson was also happy with the team’s effort against the Vikings. “We played pretty good but if we had executed better in the fourth quarter we could have won the game. We need to just keep up our intensity and keep playing great defense then we have a chance to win our last two regular season games.”
